Question

Why is the death is called a leveller

Answer 1

The well-known lyric, “Death the Leveller”, also known by its first line as “The Glories of our Blood and State”, appears at the very end of James Shirley’s play entitled The Contention of Ajax and Ulysses for the Armour of Achilles, which was printed in the year 1659.

The setting of Death the Leveller:

This poem shifts between a number of settings. In the first stanza, we get a glimpse of kingly courts as well as of the fields of peasants. In the second stanza, we are confronted with a battlefield. In the third stanza, we see an altar of human sacrifice as well as a graveyard.

Answer 2

Why has the death been called the leveller?

The poem Death the Leveller contains a line at the end of the poem which states.

Upon Death's purple alter now.

The reference to the color purple is very important in this line given the meaning behind the use of the color.